Earlier this month I attended my sister’s beautiful beach wedding in Rhode Island, which took place on my daughter’s birthday. In honor of the coincidence of the two dates, my sister gave my daughter, who is engaged, the engagement ring that belonged to my paternal grandmother, Julia Mary (Sakusky)...
The 4th of July–the nation’s birthday, independence, parades, fireworks, picnics and cookouts, family gatherings. For genealogists and family historians, it’s a chance to savor our family’s role in creating our great country, and share it. Maybe our ancestors arrived in one of the original thirteen colonies, or maybe they...
In my family, there were five of us—my parents married in 1950, and I was born the same year, in California, while my father, a serving naval officer, was deployed to Korea. My brother was born in 1955 in Annapolis, while my father was on the staff of the...
On Memorial Day it used to be the custom to visit family cemeteries. As a young girl, my mother did so with her grandparents, and I’m sure my father did as well. When I was a child, my family did not live close to the burial places of any...
